Sometime in October, 1838, Charles Darwin happened to pick up and readMalthus' book on Population. The facts of "the struggle forexistence," so strikingly presented in that now celebrated volume,suggested an explanation of a problem which had long interested andpuzzled him, namely, the origin of species.
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The temperament of the Negro, as I conceive it, consists in a fewelementary but distinctive characteristics, determined by physical[Pg 136]organizations and transmitted biologically. These characteristicsmanifest themselves in a genial, sunny, and social disposition, in aninterest and attachment to external, physical things rather than tosubjective states and objects of introspection, in a disposition forexpression rather than enterprise and action.
A further result of the innate characteristics and tendencies of thefeeble-minded is to be found in the effect upon them of the biologicallaw of natural selection, resulting from the universal struggle forexistence and the survival of the fittest. We need not discuss here itsprofound influences, economic and otherwise, upon the lives of thementally defective in general, but it will be profitable to reviewbriefly the effect of natural selection upon the juvenile delinquentgroup.
It is probably the breaking down of local attachments and the weakeningof the restraints and inhibitions of the primary group, under theinfluence of the urban environment, which are largely responsible forthe increase of vice and crime in great cities. It would be interestingin this connection to determine by investigation how far the increase incrime keeps pace with the increasing mobility of the population. It isfrom this point of view that we should seek to interpret all thosestatistics which register the disintegration of the[Pg 313] moral order, forexample, the statistics of divorce, of truancy, and of crime.
In the whole history of economics the stranger makes his appearanceeverywhere as the trader, the trader his as the stranger. As[Pg 323] long asproduction for one's own needs is the general rule, or products areexchanged within a relatively narrow circle, there is no need of anymiddleman within the group. A trader is only required with thoseproducts which are produced entirely outside of the group. Unless thereare people who wander out into foreign lands to buy these necessities,in which case they are themselves "strange" merchants in this otherregion, the trader must be a stranger. No other has a chance forexistence.
Two of the best sociological statements of primary contacts are to befound in Professor Cooley's analysis of primary groups in his bookSocial Organization and in Shaler's exposition of the sympathetic wayof approach in his volume The Neighbor. A mass of descriptive materialfor the further study of the primary contacts is available from manysources. Studies of primitive peoples indicate that early socialorganizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary groupcontacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolutestandards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws ofConnecticut are little else than primary-group attitudes written intolaw. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by theexperience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which isan abstract prescription for social life in[Pg 331] secondary societies. Herealso should be included the consideration of programs and projects forcommunity organization upon the basis of primary contacts, as forexample, Ward's The Social Center. 2ff7e9595c
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